When I was offered the chance to host a Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off featuring the upcoming cookbook by Lisa Fain, The Homesick Texan, I jumped at the opportunity! I have been a fan of her blog and her food for a long time now...and most of you know of my affinity for Tex-Mex food (it sits pretty close to Mexican as my favorite). While I want to make pretty much every single thing in the book, I figured I needed to start somewhere, and where better to begin than with some tacos. Fain's description of "Dallas's gas station taco belt" with offerings that range from picadillo to tongue reminded me of the taquerias in my own town. Stuffed with flavorful, savory fillings and sprinkled with the usual cilantro and onion...with the addition of a roasted jalapeño like we often include at home...I had a hunch these would go over well at our house. And they did. These little cubes of porky goodness just melted in your mouth. With a side of some tasty black beans (done Austin-style), we happily licked our fingers at the picnic table while washing everything down with cold cervezas and Jarritos.

Toast pasillas in a dry skillet over high heat for ~10 seconds per side, or until they start to puff and change colors. Fill skillet with enough water to cover chiles and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and let chiles rehydrate until soft, ~30 minutes.

Before cooking, let pork sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry pork in the skillet for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Now...when it comes to pork shoulder, my personal preference is a longer cooking time, otherwise the meat is a bit chewy and tough. So, after the pork cooked down for 15 minutes, I added two cups of water, covered the pan and let it simmer down. I repeated this for one hour, adding more water as needed, until the pork wound up just coated with the "sauce" as it was after the first 15 minutes. The pork was super tender and retained the fantastic flavor that (I believe) was intended.

While pork is cooking, place jalapeños under broiler and cook for ~10 minutes, or until blackened, turning once. Serve pork in warm tortillas, topped with cilantro and onions, along with the roasted chiles and lime wedges...and salsa, if you like.

Rinse and sort through beans, discarding any stones or shriveled beans.

Place beans in a large pot and cover with 1" of water. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.

Drain and rinse the beans in a colander in the sink.

Return the empty pot to the stove and on medium-low heat, warm the vegetable oil. Add onions and carrots to pot and cook until onions are translucent, stirring occasionally, ~8 minutes. Add garlic and cook another 30 seconds.

Return beans to the pot along with the chipotles and half of the cilantro. Cover with 2" water, bring to a boil, then turn heat down to low and simmer uncovered for ~1½ hours.

Add remaining cilantro, cumin, tomato paste, and lime juice. Season to taste with salt. Cook uncovered for another 30 minutes, or until beans are tender all the way through (will vary depending on the freshness of your beans). When done, smash a few beans against the side of the pot with a spoon to thicken, if you wish. Stir and serve.

*This post is part of The Homesick Texan Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off sponsored by Hyperion and hosted (right here!) at girlichef*

random excerpt:"Then he tells me about the time he was having dinner witha a woman who was a turtle rescuer in Texas. When he ordered the shrimp special, she broke out into tears. It turns out that the woman was in a fight with local shrimpers over the use of TEDs - turtle excluder devices - that help loggerheads to escape from shrimp nets. Despite the TEDs, she believed that every shrimp cocktail translated into a dead loggerhead."

summary/synopsis:(from TLC site) Does living with a pet really make people happier and healthier? What can we learn from biomedical research with mice? Who enjoys a better quality of life—–the chicken destined for your dinner plate or the rooster in a Saturday night cockfight? Why is it wrong to eat the family dog?

Drawing on more than two decades of research into the emerging field of anthrozoology, the science of human–animal relations, Hal Herzog offers an illuminating exploration of the fierce moral conundrums we face every day regarding the creatures with whom we share our world. Alternately poignant, challenging, and laugh-out-loud funny—blending anthropology, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy—this enlightening and provocative book will forever change the way we look at our relationships with other creatures and, ultimately, how we see ourselves.---

my thoughts/review: I was thoroughly fascinated, thrilled, and enthralled by this book. Culture and upbringing and moral conscience. From careers to eating habits to how one persons pet is another persons pest. Anthrozoology is such a diverse field...one with the possibility for endless studies and numerous teaching/thinking paths to follow. Herzog captured my attention and made me slow down...made me contemplate. A few instances made me cringe. Some made me laugh. Not only was I entertained by his experiences, they were something to savor. Something to learn from. Studies that illustrated a point, yet left me wondering.

My mom stopped by for a visit this weekend and I turned around to find that she had picked up my copy of this book and (like mother, like daughter) was already lost in the pages. She made me promise I would pass it on to her as soon as I was finished with it.

Points to ponder: Would you be more likely to order a Patagonian Tooth Fish or a Chilean Sea Bass for your next meal? Would you rather have a dog or a beetle as a pet? Do dolphins have curative powers? If it is okay to run tests on rats, is it okay to run tests on dogs?

And it's true...this book will make you stop and ponder your own actions when it comes to the way you look at animals. If you enjoy science, psychology, animal/people studies, you may enjoy this book.

about the author: Hal Herzog has been investigating the complex psychology of our interactions with other species for more than two decades. He is particularly interested in how people negotiate real-world ethical dilemmas, and he has studied animal activists, cockfighters, veterinary students, animal researchers, and ex-vegetarians. An award-winning teacher and researcher, he has written more than 100 articles and book chapters. His research has been published in journals such as Science, The American Psychologist, The Journal of the Royal Society, The American Scholar, Anthrozoos, BioScience,The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Ethology, and Developmental Psychobiology. His work has been covered by Newsweek, Slate, National Public Radio, Scientific American, USA Today, The London Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and many other newspapers.

Author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals, Hal Herzog is also Professor of Psychology at Western Carolina University and lives in the Smoky Mountains with his wife Mary Jean and their cat Tilly.

I'm not complaining, but I seem to have cobs of corn coming out the wazoo. I actually look forward to my wazoo overflowing about this time every year. I've been a corn on the cob fiend ever since I was able to pick it up with my own two hands. I can still remember how distraught I was when I was able to eat it because my teeth were either too loose or missing altogether. My youngest is experiencing that right now. I do think it's kind of fun to break out the knife and shear sheets of corn from the cob, though. But it's so much more fun to go typewriter on a few good cobs. While the whole family prefers it over an open fire or on the grill, there are times when we cook it inside, as well. Preferably under the broiler (just something about that smoky, charred taste), but occasionally steamed or simmered. The other day, with a dozen and a half ears waiting to be eaten, my neighbor handed a huge brown bag over the fence...and it was filled to the rim with more corn. She said she couldn't look at another cob for awhile. I will happily be on the receiving end of that! So, we've been not only eating it from the cob, but slicing it off to make creamed corn and casseroles and soup!

While I had high hopes for this bowl of chowder, it wound up being just okay. We liked it. We ate it. But it probably won't be something we make again. But if I do, I'll use at least double the shrimp and the corn. It wasn't the pretty yellow I imagined it would be either. Oh well. It wasn't our favorite meal of all time, but it was pretty good...totally edible.

Peel, clean and tail your shrimp and cut the corn from the cobs. Place the shrimp shells and tails, and the cobs (milked with the back of a knife) into a pot with the chicken broth. Bring it to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer ~15 minutes. Strain out the solids and return to heat to keep warm.

Heat a large Dutch oven (or other heavy soup pot) over medium heat and add your bacon. Cook until done, and lift out with a slotted spoon to drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Set aside. Pour off all but about a tablespoon of the bacon grease, then return pot to the heat. Add onion, potatoes, jalapeño, and thyme to pot and cook, stirring, until onion is softened, 3-5 minutes. Add corn and about a quart of the hot broth. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Add shrimp and cook another five minutes. Stir in the cream and season to taste with salt and pepper. If you wish, pulse with an immersion blender a few times.

To serve, ladle into serving bowls and sprinkle each with the reserved bacon, some oyster crackers, and some fresh parsley, cilantro, or other green herb of your choice.

Many of you already know and love Lisa Fain and her blog, The Homesick Texan. I'm going to venture to guess that you are going to love her new cookbook just as much...maybe more! I am SO EXCITED to announce that I will be hosting a Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off featuring this upcoming release right here. With final copies of this stunning cookbook graciously provided to myself and a great group of bloggers by Hyperion, our greedy page-flipping is about to come to fruition on the page! Together we will be cooking the same recipe in our individual kitchens for the first couple of weeks. The third week each blogger branches off to cook up something to suit their fancy. We will round off the month with our own reviews of the cookbook and the food. I will keep track of everybody's posts right here on this page and post a mouthwatering round-up once we've filled our plates and our bellies with some delicious food from Texas.

This is a list of all of the bloggers who are joining me in The Homesick Texan Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off (in no particular order):

This spotlight will go on for the next four weeks. Please check back weekly to find links to individual posts from each participant. This way you won't just get one opinion (mine) on each recipe and on the book in general - you'll get at least 20 separate, honest reviews and posts...weekly!

In May '11,Gourmetposted a list of50 Women Game-Changers (in Food)that runs the gamut from food writers to cookbook authors to television personalities to restauranteurs to chefs to food bloggers. Some are a given. Some are controversial. Speaking the names of some brings fond childhood memories. Speaking the names of others will make some readers cringe. And of course, some of our favorites were not even included. We food-lovers are a passionate bunch of people and whether we agree or disagree, every woman on this list has earned her place for a reason. Being a woman who is passionate about food (cooking, eating, talking about, writing about, photographing), when I caught wind ofMaryfrom One Perfect Bite'sidea of cooking/blogging her way through each of these 50 women...one per week...I knew I wanted to join her. Many of these women paved the way for us in culinary school, in the kitchen, in cookbooks, in food writing, and on television and I think it is a fabulous way to pay tribute to their efforts. Some of the women on the list have been tops with me for years. Some I have heard of (perhaps even seen, read, or cooked from) before. And there are even a handful that I am not familiar with at all. I excited to educate myself on each of these women game-changers and hope you look forward to reading along. We are going in order from 1 to 50.

the "Gourmet" prompt...

12. Lidia Bastianich(and her brood)- Everybody’s nonna, Lidia founded an empire, and she does it all: cookbooks, TV shows, restaurants, and wines galore. Then last summer—with son Joe, Mario Batali, and Oscar Farinetti—she opened Eataly, the cucina italiana Manhattan multiverse and, basically, took over the world.---

I feel all twisted inside this week. I really enjoyed Lidia. For years. Her show was in the line-up I watched years ago on PBS before I got cable. I have a few of her books. But I'm a very emotional, compassionate being, and just hearing the accusations* swirling around her right now, I feel sick. Character is a pretty big deal to me. I have always tried very hard to stick to what my mama taught me: If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. So. I wonder if people can lose their spots? Anyway. While it saddens me, I'm not going to say anything further since I can't conjure up the will to give her accolades right now. I will still share a recipe. Because cooking eases my mind.

Please don't get all huffy if you love Lidia. Of course I believe in innocent until proven guilty...and I hope that it is simply tabloid fodder.

dough: Combine flour, sugar, lemon and orange zest, and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add eggs, butter, and vanilla. Stir them around with your fingertips, then work the wet ingredients into the dry until smooth and evenly blended. Gather dough into a ball, lightly flour a work surface, and knead until smooth, 3-4 minutes. Form into a disk, wrap in plastic, and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

Divide into eight pieces. Roll each piece out into a ⅓" thick rope. Cut each rope into ⅓" sections. Lightly form each section into a ball the size of a marble. Or don't...you can leave them as-is.

Heat ~3" of oil in a deep pot to 350° F. I just guesstimate. It'll be all shimmery. Drop in a ball to test it. Once the oil is ready, fry balls about a quarter at a time (or as many as will fit in comfortably without crowding) for ~3 minutes, or until golden. Lift out with a strainer and place on a sheet tray lined with paper towels.

syrup: Put honey, sugar, and water in a pot wide enough to hold all of the struffoli. Bring to a boil over high heat. Syrup will foam up a LOT. Continue to cook until foam dies down and mixture becomes a shade darker, ~5-7 minutes. Remove from heat and immediately add all of the fried dough balls to the syrup. Remove them with a slotted spoon or skimmer and mound them on a serving plate, letting excess drip off first. Scatter as many sprinkles as you like over the top and eat! Will keep for several days loosely covered with plastic wrap.

Lidia Bastianich( February 21, 1947 - present)

Tutti a tavola a mangiare. (Let's all go to the table and eat.)~Lidia's signature sign-off

random excerpt:The cumin scent of body odor; the hot metal-and-grease smel of the iron wheels against the rails; a citrus aroma from the Berber grandmother sitting across from me feeding sections of blood orange to the three grandchildren crammed onto the seat next to her; the fragrance of mint tea and falafel from the vendors working their way through the car; and a whiff of cedar and rosemary from the arid plains and hillsides carried on the hot, dry air that blows against my face.

summary/synopsis: (fromGoodreads) From the widely praised author of The Yokota Officers Club, a keenly felt, wonderfully written novel about love that can both bind family members together and make them free, set in that precarious moment before your child leaves home for college.

Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant, is a single mom, a suburban misfit who’s given up her rebel dreams to set her only child on an upward path.

Aubrey Lightsey, a pretty, shy girl who plays clarinet, is ready to explode from wanting her “real” life to begin. When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol of students and teachers alike, the fuse is lit. Aubrey metastasizes into Cam’s worst teen nightmare: full of secrets and silences, uninterested in college. Worse, on the sly she’s in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join NEXT!—a celebrity-ridden cult—where he’s a headline grabber. As the novel unfolds—with emotional fireworks, humor, and edge-of-your-seat suspense—the dreams of daughter, mother, and father chart an inevitable, but perhaps not fatal, collision . . .

My Thoughts/Summary/Review: In truth, the main characters of this novel really grated on my nerves. Mother versus teenage daughter at every turn...without a united front in site. I found myself bothered by Cam's parenting technique. Instead of encouraging her daughter to be who she was, she wanted her to be who she thought she should be. Forcing "outcast" ideals is just as bad as forcing "jock and princess" ideals on a child. No wonder Aubrey was so combative from the moment she realized that she was her own person. Aubrey's inability to even try to express to her mother what was going on in her head was equally unnerving. Bring Tyler home to meet your mom...give her a chance. Grrrr...infuriating to me. I am a daughter...and a mother...so I understand, but it was just so extreme that is was almost unbelievable.

I did, however, enjoy the supporting cast. My favorite characters were Martin (estranged husband and father) and Tyler (boyfriend who isn't what he appears at first glance). It seemed that the men were the only ones with the ability to bring out the good qualities in both women. It seems that Cam was still holding on to the feeling of abandonment and desperation from Martin's departure from their lives. And Tyler's dark past is what gives him the character than Cam never gives him credit for...because Aubrey doesn't give her the chance.

The few food scenes were (not surprisingly) my favorite passages in the book. Aubrey refuses to confront her mother on the fact that she isn't ready for college. At least not the one her mother forced her into applying to and therefore, gaining acceptance to. She secretly forces her "Gap Year" upon her mother and expects her to freak out (which she does). It's not until Cam gets a glimpse of Aubrey on the food truck that she realizes that her daughter's passion is not her own. When pairing up with Martin to find Aubrey, it's the vivid descriptions of food that finally make me connect with this novel. From the taco piled with Korean barbecue, napa cabbage, cilantro, and tomato to the "crepe stuffed with a mixture of caramelized onions, goat cheese, roast chicken, and tarragon", I wanted a food truck to roll up outside my front yard. Bird finally hit it on the head when she wrote "I find it hard to hate a man who brings you exactly what you didn't even know you craved. Food so good that it is impossible to worry while you eat." Other than a very short excerpt in the front of the novel, I only had the final fifty pages to be delighted. The rest was all leading up to the end.

So, while it's probably not something I will read over and over, it was worth the few days that it took me to read it. Those who don't take a passage on the twenty-seventh page of the book as a sign of what's to come...are likely to really enjoy this book. Sorry, it's the foodie in me. You can't dangle food in my face....let me smell it...devour it with my eyes...and then take it away and expect me to be satisfied.

about the author: Sarah Bird is the author of seven previous novels. She is a columnist for Texas Monthly and has contributed to many other magazines including O, The OprahMagazine; The New York Times Magazine; Real Simple; and Good Housekeeping. Sarah, the 2010 Johnston Dobie Paisano Fellow, makes her empty nest in Austin, Texas. Sarah on Facebook and Twitter.

The publisher has generously offered to send one of my readers a copy of The Gap Year. To be entered to win a copy, simply leave a comment on this post telling me so. Be sure that I have a way of contacting you, should you be the winner (link to website where I can find your info or an email address). This giveaway is open only to those with mailing addresses in the USA or Canada. Submissions will be accepted through September 1st, 2011 at 11:59 pm (Eastern), and winner picked by random draw. Good Luck!

Update 1/2/11: Eight of the comments left wished to be entered into the giveaway. Winner by random draw was:

*I received a free copy of this book to review from the publisher. All thoughts and opinions stated in this post are 100% mine.follow the tour:

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